F129 
.Q12 Vl^6 







^ »> 

















4 o 







^ 



YP 





^-^-^(||i 









QUAKER HILL 
N THE NINETEENTH 
CENTURY 



SECOND EDITION 



BY 



Rev. warren H. WILSON 



READ AT THE FOURTH ANNUAL MEETING OF THE 

QUAKER HILL CONFERENCE, SEPTEMBER THE 

SIXTH. NINETEEN HUNDRED AND TWO 



Published by the Quaker Hill Conference Association 

Quaker Hill, New York 

1907 



Publications 

Of the Quaker Hii,l Conference Association 



A Critical Study of the Bible, by the Rev. Newton M. Hall 
of Spring^eld, Mass. 

The Relation of the Church at Home to the Church 
Abroad, by Rev. George William Knox, D. D., of New York. 

A Tenable Theory of Biblical Inspiration, by Prof. Irving 
Francis Wood. Ph. D., of Northampton, Mass. 

The Book Farntjer. by Edward H. Jenkins, Ph. D.. of New 
Haven. Conn. 

LOCAL HISTORY SERIES 

David Irish — A Memoir, by his daughter, Mrs. Phoebe 
T. Wanzer of Quaker Hill, N. Y 

Quaker Hill in the Eighteenth Century, by Rev. Warren 
H. Wilson of Brooklyn, N. Y. (Second Edition). 

Quaker Hill in the Nineteenth Century, by Rev. Warren 
H. Wilson of Brooklyn, N. Y. (Second Edition). 

Hiram B. Jones and His School, by Rev. Edward L. 
Chichester of Hartsdale, N. Y. 

Richard Osborn — A Reminiscence, bv Margaret B. Mon- 
ahan of Quaker Hill, N. Y. (Second Edition). 

Albert J, Akin — A Tribute by Rev. Warren H.Wilson of 
Brooklyn, N. Y. 

Ancient Homes and Early Days at Quaker Hill, by 

Amanda Akin Stearns of Quaker Hill. N. Y. 

Thomas Taber and Edward Shove —A Reminiscence, 
by Rev. Benjamin Shove of New York. 

Some Glimpses of the Past, by Alicia Hopkins Taber of 
Pawling, N. Y. 

The Purchase Meeting, by James Wood of Mt. (Cisco. 
N.Y. 

In Loving Remembrance of Ann Hayes, by Mrs. Warren 
H. Wilson of Brooklyn. N. Y. 

V/ashington's Headquarters at Fredericksburgh, by 
Lewis S. Patrick of Marinette, Wis 

Historical Landmarks in the Town of Sherman, by Ruth 
Rogers of Sherman, Conn. 

Any one of these publications may be had by addressing the 
Secretary, Rev. BERTRAM A. Warren, 

Quaker Hill. N.Y. 
Price Ten Cents. Twelve Cents Postpaid 



Gift 
Publishoi- 



QUAKER HILL IN THE 
NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

The world changed in passing from the 
eighteenth to the nineteenth century, and 
Quaker Hill changed with the world. It 
could not remain apart and it did not stand 
still. From a religious center the Hill 
became a focus of business. In the 
eighteenth the saint and the soldier, in the 
nineteenth the saint and the capitalist give 
color to the story. Instead of the united 
meeting of the earlier years there is now to 
be considered a divided Society of Friends. 

The leaven of modern thought was at 
work, inducing some to make bold and 
daring ventures in philosophy and religion ; 
the practical spirit had come into the quiet 
devotions of the saints, leading others to 
desire to be like the vigorous, successful 
Christians of other sects. Every influence 
tended to rob the Hill of its peculiar relig- 
ious character, and to take the Quakers 
farther away from George Fox. Divided 
and separated by these two forces, the 
rationalist and the pietistic, the worship- 
pers in this house were perplexed and fear- 
ful what these world- forces might mean, 
and at last in a time of contagious panic 
forgot the principles for which they 
thought they were contending and did many 
things unworthy of their grave and gentle 
character. 



RESUME OF EVENTS OF CENTURY, 

The events of the nineteenth century on 
Quaker Hill, which are worthy of mention 
are : first, the business growth and character 
of the Hill, taken on in the earlier years of 
the nineteenth century as pronouncedly as 
the Quaker worship in the earlier years of 
the eighteenth. The business development 
of the Hill is a necessary outgrowth of its 
being a Quaker community. As surely as 
Irish Catholicism produces politicians, and 
the Church of England statesmen, so surely 
does a Quaker community come in time 
to produce acute business men. I regard 
Albro Akin therefore, as a product of the 
human forces that work in Quakerism, as 
true and appropriate as David Irish or Paul 
Osborn. 

The second event is the division of the 
meeting into Orthodox and Hicksite 
Societies of Friends. As a business de- 
velopment must be the terminus a quo, the 
separation shall be the terminus ad quern of 
this paper. I find myself unable to deal 
with the whole century, and am sure there 
has happened in the one hundred years 
nothing more interesting or more valuable 
to the historical student than the great sepa- 
ration of the friends in 1828. 

Third, the Hiram Jones Academy, from 
1828 onward, of which we hear to-day, 
from Mr. Chichester. 

Fourth, the relation of the Hill to 
Slavery; the testimony of the preachers 
against it, and the operation of the "Under- 
ground Railway" in the homes of the 
Friends here and in the meeting. There are 



those living who have seen fugitive slaves 
hiding in this meeting-house. 

Fourth, the new relation of Quakerism to 
war, as developed in the War of the Seces- 
sion. Then the Quakers were no Tories, 
as in 1778 they were; and the story of that 
time is necessary to complete the story of 
the doctrine of peace on the Hill. 

Fourth, the coming of the railway in the 
valley below wrought great business 
changes in the place, removed the stores to 
the village, and sapped the neighborhood 
of some of its most energetic blood. It en- 
riched some and impoverished others. Yet 
through it all the Quaker Hill character 
remained the same. 

Fifth, the coming of the Hotel guest and 
Summer boarder, the founding of Mizzen- 
top and the development of that delightful 
and unique institution, the Quaker Hill 
boarding house; which is not a boarding 
house at all, but a hospitable Quaker home. 

Sixth, the founding and development of 
Akin Hall, the ministry of Mr. Ryder, be- 
loved and lamented, the beginnings of the 
library ; the regime of occasional preachers ; 
the growth of the Sunday-school, Endeavor, 
Church, Conference; the building of the 
Manse and the Library; all the benevolent 
designs into which God has led a rich man 
of sound heart, who is a true son, in his 
character and deed, of the nineteenth cen- 
tury on Quaker Hill. 

All these should be written, and recorded 
by this Conference. I have only strength 
and you have only time to-day for the first 
two, the business prosperity and the relig- 
ious separation of the first thirty years. 



INDUSTRIES AND STORES. 

The first thirty years of the nineteenth 
century were a period of great material 
prosperity. Farming occupied the atten- 
tion of the most, who devoted their ener- 
gies to fatting cattle, transforming corn 
into pork, and grass into cheese. The 
population of the preceding half-century, 
about equal to that at the present time in 
winter, was somewhat increased by those 
engaged in the making of hats. John Toifey, 
who married Abigail Akin, probably the 
first hatmaker, as he was the first Tofifey, 
had, in 1750 or later, planted his name and 
his trade in the corner so long known as 
Tofifey's Corners ; where his name remained 
for one hundred and fifty years, though his 
trade not more than fifty. Joseph Seeley 
made hats of all kinds, especially fine 
beaver and silk hats, on Seeley Hill, about 
a mile north of Stephen Osbom's. 

One industry which has gone away from 
the Hill, like the trade of making hats, is 
the raising and preparation of hemp. Men 
now living remember well the planting and 
harvesting of the hemp, and the laborious 
preparation of the stalks for market. The 
chapters in James Lane Allen's "Reign of 
Law" which describe this process might be 
written about fields on Quaker Hill. 

Three stores flourished in the early 
years of the nineteenth century on the Hill. 
At the Craft place the oldest and the last 
to be closed, owned by John Merritt, and 
later, 1832-1869 by James Craft, was the 
store plundered by Tories in the Revolution. 
At Tofifey's Corners, was the store of John 
Toflfey, second, father of Mrs. Anne Hayes. 

6 



At the Branch place was the store of Dan- 
iel Akin, later Judge Akin, father of Mrs. 
Gould and Mrs. Bancroft. 

SCHOOL HOUSES. 

The school-house then stood on the crest 
of the hill, where the Mizzen-top Cottage 
called the ''James Cottage," stands now. 
Thither Olive Toffey, whom this genera- 
tion know as Mrs. Admiral Worden, car- 
ried her primer to school, attended across 
the fields by the quaint figure of Timothy 
Akin, her aged bachelor uncle and devoted 
cavalier. Every evening the small maiden 
would look eastward across the fields toward 
her home where he was used to await her. 
Where, if you look now from the same 
spot, you will see a white stone in the field ; 
and where the house was, only a crumbling 
pile. 

Within the old school-house ruled Jonah 
Baldwin for many years, a master suitable 
for primitive conditions; who would doze 
through the droning hours of his classes 
while they recited well, but infallibly awake 
at the sound of a wrong word, or an incor- 
rect recitation. To him succeeded Betsey 
Osborn, of whom only the doughty name 
remains. 

The school-house was later removed to a 
location near Christian Haessler's house; 
and later still to the present site, about 1850, 
where, in 1893, the present building was 
erected in the Trusteeship of William B. 
Wheeler. 

Quaker Hill's educational history is not 
outlined without mention of the Jones 
Academy, of which Mr. Chichester writes 



fully to-day. That institution was founded 
about 1828, in the period following that 
treated in this paper. 

A school is maintained by the Friends 
on the grounds of the original Meeting- 
House, opposite the present site, from 
earliest days until after the Separation in 
1828. It was a day-school, and there Rich- 
ard Osborn, Olive Toffey Worden, Jede- 
diah Irish and Daniel Toffey, the Merritts 
and Akins, with others of the older 
Friends, learned their elementary lessons. 

POPULATION. 

In the changes which have come over 
many places east and west, this is one com- 
munity which, so far as there is record of 
the past, seems to have had about the same 
population throughout the last century and 
a half. The settlement of the Hill may be 
considered as completed by 1760. In the 
two maps of this neighborhood, made for 
George Washington in 1778-80, the number 
of houses is about the same as at present. 
There are some that have disappeared from 
sites now grown over with tangled mint, 
and catnip, and currant bushes, but to fill 
their places in the census of the Hill there 
are others of modern construction on new 
sites ; while the Hotel brings a Summer 
population that makes the Hill for two 
months more populous than in the past. 
The only increase of population I am able 
to note in the course of years is that due to 
the hatmaking industry, first carried on by 
the original John Tofifey on the recent Anne 
Hayes premises ; and later by Joseph 
Seeley, in the early twenties, on Seeley 

8 



Hill, a mile and a half to the north of the 
Meeting-house. 

RESIDENTS, 1800-1830. 

In calling the names of the worthies of 
the eighteenth century, one misses many 
once prominent. Staunch and practical 
William Russell, the pioneer in deeds (as 
others in residence and in faith), builder of 
two meeting-houses, friend of Wash- 
ington's officers, had lived, I believe on the 
present Richard T. Osborn place; but his 
name had disappeared in the marriage of 
female descendants into other families. I 
believe that William H. Taber's great-great 
grandfather was his son Elihu. Also that 
the Peckhams, name now also disappeared, 
were his grandchildren. 

The Merrits were a great name in the 
early nineteenth century. Three brothers, 
John, David and Daniel, lived on the 
present Craft, Swan and Post places re- 
spectively; and John kept the historic 
store on the corner. Paul Osborn and his 
wife, Jemima Titus, parents of William and 
Richard, lived in the Osborn Homestead, 
now Stephen Osborn's house. Unless I 
mistake, this house has maintained longer 
than any other its character as the residence 
of solid, judicious Quakerism, and of 
leadership among the Friends. 

Park Haviland was living in an old house 
on Miss Monahan's place ; with its great 
chimney and its long roof sloping to the 
north. 

At Mrs. Scott's place lived Davis Marsh 
blacksmith, and plied his trade, making all 
kinds of farming tools and guns also; a 



straightforward and honest man. He had 
a trip-hammer whose stroke could be heard 
a mile away. 

On the higher road eastward lived Akin 
Toffey, at the Bancroft Branch farm, and 
his wife, Anne Akin ; and across the road in 
the old house now fallen into a crumbling 
heap, lived Daniel Toffey, father of Mar- 
garet Craft and Mrs. Olive Worden. With 
them lived Timothy Akin, son of James, 
whose white stone, recording almost one 
hundred years, you may see in the burying 
ground east of Akin Hall. He was a quaint 
old bachelor, the oldest person who recalls 
him remembers him as having always been 
an old man; a bachelor and very faithful 
in attendance at the meeting, but with a 
heart that loved children and animals so 
well that it must have had its story, if 
white marble could only tell it. 

The old house, now a tenant-house of 
Mr. Lyon's place, was then a tenant-house 
of the Merrit family. 

Of the school-house I speak elsewhere. 
Coming then southward, the Sherman place 
is next in importance, now the tenant-house 
on Albert Akin's farm. There lived the 
wagon-maker of the place, Hiram Sherman, 
whose father was a wagon-maker there be- 
fore him, and in the day before railways 
and before great factories the wagon- 
builder was a great man. Father and son 
were honest men and good workmen; they 
put no timber into a wagon till it had been 
seasoned two years. Sherman made for 
years the coffins for burial of all who died 
in the town. Funeral fee seven dollars. 

10 



On the place east of Miss Monahan's, so 
long known as the Garrett Ferris place, 
lived Jephtha Sabin, his residence a 
terminus of the turnpike from Pough- 
keepsie. 

Southward again, came the two Akin resi- 
dences, now the houses of the Misses Akin 
and of the Branch family. In the former, 
which was the Akin homestead, lived Albro 
Akin, father of Albert J. and William H. 
and their sisters ; a man of great vitality 
and energy. Prominent in the financial af- 
fairs of the community as farmer, store- 
keeper and financier, for a time County 
Judge, Albro Akin was always a leader. Op- 
posite him lived Daniel Akin, father of Mrs. 
Gould and Mrs. Bancroft, who for a time 
conducted a store on that site, and later 
became a prominent politician. He was a 
man of agreeable manners, wisdom and 
force. For many years he was elected 
County Judge, succeeding Albro Akin. 
He was probably the most prominent man 
of that generation in civic and state afifairs, 
resident on the Hill. 

I have spoken of the store of John Tofifey, 
on the old ToflFey Corners. Below the 
Hill lived Gideon Kirby, in the old Reed- 
Ferris house, now the Dodge and Arnold 
house, whose sons built the present spa- 
cious residence there. He was uncle of 
Miss Fannie Kirby. 

East of Toflfey Corners, which is now the 
Mizzen-top Hotel, lived, on the top of the 
Hill, — for the present Kirby place was 
built later, — Charles Wing, brother of 
Daniel, David, Elihu and son of Abraham. 
The Wakemans, Seth, — there always was 

11 



a Seth Wakeman, — Gideon, Denman, lived 
on the place recently vacated by them on 
top of the Hill. 

At the residence of Martin Leach lived 
Peter Akin and his son Isaac. 

The Irish place has been the Irish place, 
I believe, from the beginning until now. 
There at the time of the division, lived 
David Irish, with his father, Amos. He 
was ordained a minister of the Hicksite 
division of the meeting, after the separa- 
tion, in 1831. 

At Wing's Corners, on top of the Hill to 
the southward lived Abraham Wing and 
his sons, David, Daniel and Elihu. The 
Mattie Wing place was built for Daniel 
later; and with him lived his brother 
Elihu. 

Peter Adams was the Grandfather of 
George Henry Adams, and lived where now 
lives his grandson. 

On Burch Hill as one mounts the north- 
ward slope was the blacksmith shop of Joel 
Winter Church and Jesse Lane was prob- 
ably his apprentice. At this shop was the 
charger of Washington shod fifty years be- 
fore the separation of the meeting on the 
Hill. 

At the Adams place, where now lives 
Fred Osborne, was the residence of Benja- 
min Jones, father of the brothers, Hiram 
and Cyrenus, whose famous school was 
opened at Wings Corners the very year the 
Meeting was separated. 

At the John Hoyt place lived Isaac 
Squires, cabinet-maker, who contributed a 
bedstead to every farmhouse of his genera- 
tion. 

12 



At the Charles Jennings place in Sheman 
Isaac IngersoU and his son Akin Ingersoll, 
a farmer and currier, while opposite lived 
Edward Brotherton, a carpenter, — but no 
common carpenter : For he was the first 
man hereabouts to abandon the old method 
of erecting buildings by what was called 
"cut and try." 

Edward Brotherton believed that a build- 
ing could be cut out and all the timbers 
shaped by measure and square before they 
were put together. He erected a barn on 
this plan which was famous. Farmers 
came for miles to see ; came incredulous and 
critical, and went away convinced. Who 
shall say that a man so bold in the realm of 
mechanics was not moved by the same spirit 
of the times as the Quaker theologians who 
anticipated Moody in his orthodoxy ; or 
those bolder thinkers, who dared to be 
called heterodox for the sake of specula- 
tions about God that to-day shape the think- 
ing, as orthodoxy determines the feeling 
and ethics, of the evangelical churches. 

Northward from the Meeting-house, one 
comes first to the Osborn homestead. The 
Hoags erected their house opposite in 1860. 
The family came on the Hill about 1843. 
William D. Hoag father of Ira, buying the 
lands owned by Merritts for 140 years. 

Back of the present site of the Ira Hoag 
place, approached by a lane, now no more 
than a field-track, was the Merritt home- 
stead, where lived earlier Nehemiah Merritt, 
th^- father of John and David and Daniel. 

I have spoken of the Joseph Seeley hat- 
factory and residence, which were a half- 
mile north of Stephen Osborn's. The house 

13 



has been removed and rebuilt as the present 
residence of Richard T. Osborn. The form- 
er house on Richard Osborn's place was a 
brick structure, in which it is believed that 
the Marquis de Lafayette was entertained. 

In the house on the present Cass place 
lived Edward Howard; at the opposite side 
of the road lived Anthony Aldrich the 
grandfather, and Seth the father, of Arnold 
and Eli Aldrich and their brothers. 

The oldest place I believe on the north 
Quaker Hill district is that occupied by 
William H. Taber, and owned by him and 
his ancestors since the time of the earliest 
grants by royal patent. It is credibly nar- 
rated that officers of Washington's army 
were quartered in this house, and the gleam- 
ing bayonet of the pacing sentry was seen 
in the starlight all night through, in the 
Fall of 1778. 

Off the Hill one may call attention to the 
Briggs' places easterly in Sherman. To the 
Hurd family in the valley at Hurd's Cor- 
ners, who were there in 1778; to the Soule 
family, living near where C. Emory Baker 
lives now, and East of the Stephen Osborn 
place. Every name involves history and 
biography of great interest ; and recalls to 
the hearer events and characteristics pecu- 
liar and memorable. 

PUBLIC MORALS. 

When the history of centuries comes to 
be written, there will be recorded, among 
the traits of the nineteenth century its im- 
proved morality. Quaker Hill may serve 
as a guage of this rise in the tide of public 
morals. The records of the eighteenth cen- 

14 



tury are filled with the narrative of loose 
iamily relations, disorderly public actions, 
and church discipline striving inflexibly to 
stem the tide with rebukes, testimonies 
and excommunications. 

The walls of this meeting-house have re- 
sounded many a time with as solemn dis- 
ownments as the thunder of the papal bull. 
L XJ^^ scarcely a business meeting of 
the Oblong Monthly meeting here for a 
century in which there was not a member 
called to account for moral or ecclesiastical 
otfense of some kind. Every disobedience 
of the moral law, or of the regulations of 
the Friends, was called to the attention of 
the meeting and taken into solemn con- 
sideration. Then in a regular and estab- 
lished mode, with due time for mental pro- 
cesses to work without discomposing excite- 
ment, the case went on and on, until the 
offender either acknowledged and con- 
demned his misconduct, or if he persisted 
m defending it, after being visited and 
reasoned with by increasing committees he 
was finally warned and disowned, 

"reading out of meeting.'' 
Would you like to hear the words of the 
Anathema of Quakerism.^ Let me read 
them, as they were pronounced many times 
^ ^f^^'i^^ ^^"^^^^ ^ century, within these 
walls. The ofifense charged shall be a moral 
one. 

"WHEREAS Jonathan Osgood hath had 
a right of membership among us, the people 
called Quakers, but not taking heed to the 
dictates of truth, hath so far deviated from 
the good order established among Friends 



15 



as to neglect attendance of our religious 
meetings for worship and discipline, to 
deviate from the plain scripture language, 
and to refuse to settle with his creditors, 
and pay his just debts; and hath shut him- 
self up concealed from the civil authorities, 
therefore for the clearing of truth and our 
Religious Society we do testify against his 
misconduct, and disown him, the said 
Jonathan Osgood, from being any longer a 
member of our Society, until he shall from 
a true sight and sense of his misconduct 
condemn the same to the satisfaction of the 
meeting. Which that he may is our desire 
for him. Signed, in and on behalf of Pur- 
chase Monthly Meeting this th day of 
the th month." 

The above wording except the name, is 
taken from the minutes of Purchase Meet- 
ing; and some of the offenses mentioned in 
a few pages of those minutes, for which 
men were disowned, or for acknowledgment 
pardoned and restored, are the following : — 
''deviating from plainness of speech and 
apparel" — "not keeping to the plain 
Scripture language" ; ''going to Frol- 
Hcks," "going to places of amusement," 
"attending a horserace"; "frequenting 
a tavern, being frequently intoxicated 
with strong liquor"; "placing his son 
out apprentice with one not of our Society" ; 
"leaving his habitation in a manner dis- 
agreeable to his friends"; "to use pro- 
fane language, and carry a pistol in an 
unbecoming manner" ; "bearing arms" ; 
"to challenge a person to fight" ; "to 
marry with a first cousin"; "to keep 
company with a young woman not of our 

16 



Society on account of marriage"; "to be 
married by a magistrate"; to marry 
with one not of our Society before a hire- 
ling priest"; "to join principles and prac- 
tice with another society of people"; "to 
be guilty of fornication" ; "to be unchaste 
with her who is now my wife, the person 
afterward married by the accused." Oblong 
minutes: "to have bought a negro slave," 
"to have bought a negro wench and to be 
familiar with her." 

These stern and searching requirements 
reveal a code of religious government that 
controlled the life in its chief passions and 
operations. It was a good manner of life ; 
and without it the Hill would be a different 
place to-day. But one mstinctively feels 
that it is a code that could not be put into 
operation in the nineteenth century. 

It was the operation of this code of mor- 
als, and of its ecclesiastical checks and 
curbs, that made the Quaker Hill man and 
the Quaker Hill sentiment what they are. 
And having done its work this code at the 
last perhaps tended to weaken the meeting, 
as it had strengthened the public consci- 
ence. In talking recently with a sweet 
old lady past eighty, I asked her, "Did you 
ever hear anyone disowned in meeting?" 
"No," she never had, and doubted if there 
had been many. Later, her daughter said, 
"Why, Grandmother, you married out of 
meeting yourself!" Whereupon I asked 
again, "Well, what did they do with you 
then?" "Oh," she replied, not at all em- 
barassed, "they turned me out!" 

So frequent were these readings out of 
meeting that one would think there could 

17 



be no Quakers left. But the supply, both 
of members and of offenders, yes and of 
those to rebuke them and disown them, 
never failed. The tendency that brought 
the custom to a close was not a failure of 
members, nor of disposition on the part of 
the meeting, but a change in the disposition 
of public opinion, which had approved of 
the stern discipline of the eighteenth cen- 
tury. 

BETTER MORAL CONDITIONS. 

The nineteenth century religion was less 
a moral code than that of the earlier cycle, 
and the social life of the nineteenth was 
more moral than that of the eighteenth. He 
who reads the minutes of Oblong Meeting 
for the last half of the eighteenth century 
and compares the record of the life of the 
Hill of those days with the events of the 
Hill's last twenty years will be convinced 
that there were more cases of unchastity in 
those days in the meeting than there are in 
the whole community now. This is the more 
remarkable because the offenders were all 
good Quakers, clad in drab and gray, and 
the meeting was constantly disowning mem- 
bers for such offences, constantly thinning 
out its ranks, ever weeding out the im- 
moral. Yet among those who remained there 
were in every year more cases recorded of 
violation of the standard of Christian pur- 
ity in a tangible, overt form than all the 
present residents of the Hill have furnished 
in any one of the last eight years. 

The causes of this better moral tone of 
the nineteenth century are many. First, it 
is fair to say that the long period of strict 
church discipline, with its clear and fearless 

18 



testimony of a meeting that was not afraid 
to lose members, but was unwilling to con- 
done cheating and violence and adultery, 
must have had its effect upon this particu- 
lar community. The nineteenth century 
can afford to be lenient because the eight- 
eenth was so strict. 

Second, the former century was troubled 
with many degrading moral conditions. 
War was abroad, with attending brigandage 
and lawlessness. Slavery corrupted the 
home and perverted the sexual and com- 
mercial standards. The later century was 
awakened to these very evils and their con- 
sequences. 

Third, the earlier years of the life of any 
community are always more lawless than 
the later. Many offences are matters of bad 
taste, rather than of bad morals, crudities 
rather than crimes, and to these such a 
strict standard as that of the Oblong Meet- 
ing was the best schoolmaster. It took a 
century for the settler in the virgin forest 
to learn the authority of the Ten Command- 
ments over his pioneer life ; but once learned 
he has not forgotten it. He can be relied 
on to teach it to the latest arrived immi- 
grant from Europe or negro from the 
South. These raised seats were the Mount 
Sinai from which that law was thundered 
upon the dull and torpid conscience of the 
pioneers. 

THE GREAT SEPARATION. 

In the years 1827 and 1828 the meetings 
of Friends in Pennsylvania, New York, 
Ohio, Indiana and Maryland were divided. 
Those in Virginia, Carolina, and New Eng- 
land, as those in England itself, remained 

19 



united. Yet so pervasive was the separa- 
tion that ever since one must call a member 
of the Society not merely a Friend, but an 
Orthodox Friend or a Hicksite Friend. 

The causes of this division, as has been 
indicated before, were general throughout 
the country, for all the divisions happened 
at a stroke in the brief period of two years. 

The nineteenth century was applying the 
newly gotten liberty to thought and re- 
ligion. Even the remotest places felt the 
influence. Religion was taking more ag- 
gressive and vigorous forms and this vigor 
was showing itself in the direction both of 
speculation and of evangelism. The same 
meetings contained men who demanded to 
think for themselves about God, and men 
who craved to present the old Gospel to 
sinners. Devout men were challenging and 
opposing a spirit which they deemed athe- 
istical ; while equally good men were eag- 
erly pondering every speculation about 
God. The former were taking part in re- 
vivals and organizing Sunday-schools ; the 
latter were schooling their own souls in the 
discernment of the true and the rejection 
of the false, in all the new ideas about God 
and nature and man. 

The inevitable division followed between 
men naturally progressive and speculative, 
and men naturally conservative and prac- 
tical. The progressive became in his haste 
a radical ; and the conservative an angry 
reactionary. On all sides men were either 
thinking as pioneers, or crying out against 
innovations. 

One can better understand the forces that 
divided the Friends, if he remembers that 

20 



David Irish was of the same generation 
as George Stephenson, the perfecter of the 
steam engine, and was subject to the same 
enhvening, intellectual influences. The first 
steamboat, the Clermont, was built by Ful- 
ton in 1807, when David Irish was thirteen 
years old, and steamed against the tide 
from New York to Albany. But stronger 
than the tide was the current of disbelief, 
scorn, derision and amazement of the men 
on the shore against the inventor, Fulton. 
Yet the boat steamed on, to the astonish- 
ment of the New Yorker, the wild surprise 
of the farmer, and the terror of the Indian. 
No wonder that in such a time of conflict- 
ing passions, and ideas too great for any 
one man, the Friends and other Christians 
accused one another of atheism on the one 
hand, and of bigotry on the other; and 
neither accusation was just. 

PHILADELPHIA MEETING DIVIDED. 

The manner of the division was on this 
wise. The two warring tendencies began 
to show themselves about 1805, in the 
preaching of rationalist ideas by Elias 
Hicks and others, and in the criticism of 
him by certain persons, especially in Phila- 
delphia. For twenty years, during which 
Hicks travelled widely in the country, west 
to Ohio, and south to Maryland, he con- 
tinued to influence the minds of many, par- 
ticularly the young, in the direction of re- 
ligious thinking in harmony with the intel- 
lectual movement of the century. For 
twenty years also opposers of his views, ani- 
mated themselves by a fervent desire to 
save men from the worldly philosophy of 

21 



the time, acting every year more in har- 
mony with the evangehcal fervor of the 
nineteenth century, became more suspicious 
of EUas Hicks' opinions, and more energetic 
to silence their advocates. 

Finally in 1827, after the chasm between 
two parties in the Society had deepened 
and widened beyond bridging, the two par- 
ties met at the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, 
hked armed camps. Neither would yield. 
At this time the party which was coming 
to be called Orthodox was being led by a 
delegation of visitors from the London 
Yearly Meeting, among whom were most 
notable Thomas Shillito, Ann Braithwait 
and Ann Jones. The preaching and min- 
istry of these visitors was as obnoxious to 
the followers of Hicks as was the doctrine 
of Hicks to the Orthodox. 

At Philadelphia there were many, espec- 
ially among the Hicksite faction, who saw 
that separation was inevitable ; and after 
some preliminary skirmishing, they, find- 
ing themselves the weaker party, withdrew ; 
and following a plan of John Comly, the 
Assistant Clerk, created a Yearly Meeting 
and the other ecclesiastical machinery of 
their own. Asserting ever since their de- 
sire for re-union, they have worshipped to 
this day apart. 

The Orthodox, who retained the records, 
most of the property, the affiliation with 
London Yearly Meeting, claimed that they 
were the only Society of Friends, excom- 
m.unicated their former brethren, and de- 
clined a proposition for a proportionate di- 
vision of the property. 

22 



NEW YORK YEARLY MEETING RENT. 

New York Yearly Meeting assembled the 
next year in an atmosphere electric with 
the coming storm. The presence of Phila- 
delphia Friends whom the Philadelphia 
Orthodox had disowned, and who adhered 
to the Hicksite party there, offended the 
evangelical party. The Clerk who was 
Orthodox, announced it as the sense of a 
meeting of stormy debate that the repre- 
sentatives adjourn to the basement, in order 
to free themselves from the undesired per- 
sons. 

Those who contended for the right of 
the Philadelphia representatives named 
another clerk, who started for the desk. 
Instantly a stormy debate became an inco- 
herent riot. Men lost their heads and for- 
got their principles. The floor resounded 
with the pounding of canes. The air was 
rent with the clamor of many speaking at 
once. Hisses and cries of accusation were 
heard. The new Clerk found his way to 
the desk barred, and had to go over the 
railing. The minute in the hand of the 
Clerk who urged adjournment was almost 
snatched away. And between those going 
to the basement and those determined to 
remain, the table of the Clerk was pulled 
in pieces ; part went out with the Orthodox 
and part stayed with the Hicksites. 

When the Orthodox party in the Meet- 
ing-house yard demanded admission to the 
basement, they were denied entrance, and 
after pressing their demand a reasonable 
time they departed to Rutgers Medical Col- 
lege. Here for the first time in years they 

83 



— as perhaps also the Hicksites, — enjoyed 
calmly and gratefully the presence and 
favor of God's Spirit. The testimony 
which both parties bear to this return of 
the witness of God's Spirit to their hearts, 
after the strife, is the only fragment of a 
rainbow after the storm. 

OBLONG QUARTERLY MEETING. 

Oblong Meeting had its share of the ex- 
citement of the times. Ann Jones, one of 
the English Friends whose preaching served 
to crystallize the Orthodox party, had 
spoken here. Voices had been heard on 
both sides. Yet the meeting had no neces- 
sity to divide. The average hearer was not 
so offended at the orthodoxy of the one 
party, or at the speculations of the other, 
that he must choose between them. Such 
a degree of tranquillity prevailed indeed 
that, in the answers to the Queries of the 
Quarterly meeting as to the state of religion 
here, the meeting could find no graver ill- 
doing than this, that the worshippers here 
were *'not free of sleeping in meeting." 

The month following the Yearly Meeting 
in New York was June, and that month 
the Nine Partner's Quarterly meeting 
representing the meetings of Duchess 
county and environs, was to assemble on 
Quaker Hill. June is always a fair month. 
The woods and thickets blazed and glowed 
with laurel, as the representatives rode on 
horseback to the meeting. The bob-o-links 
fluttered and twittered and fiddled and 
fluted in the air over the field across from 
the meeting house, where the grave men in 
drab left their horses in the deep grass. 

24 



But the men and women in Quaker garb 
had no eyes or ears for beauty or harmony. 
This June was not to be a bridal month but 
a time of divorce. To this Quartely meet- 
ing men came anxious and expectant. A 
few came resolved. The two sets of repre- 
sentatives from the divisions of the New 
York Yearly Meeting were dignified and 
watchful. At last the doors were closed 
upon the representatives ; and the shutters 
drawn between the men's and women's 
meetings. 

In a legislative meeting of Quakers more 
responsibility devolves upon the Clerk than 
upon the Chairman and the Secretary in a 
Parliamentary assembly. So that the Quar- 
terly Meeting looked to the Clerk's desk for 
his action. Rising at the table, on which 
he had laid the books and papers, he de- 
clined further service, and stepped down 
from his place. At once a Hicksite was 
named to take his place. Extracts from 
the minutes of the Yearly Meeting are sent 
every year to the subordinate meetings for 
endorsement, and these came next in order. 
Objection was made by orthodox delegates 
but it became evident that they were out- 
numbered; and as it is customary for de- 
cisions to be reached by unanimous votes 
in Friends' meetings, the smaller party 
withdrew from the meeting to the Osborn 
homestead, now the house of Stephen 
Osborn. Here they proceeded with the in- 
terrupted business of Nine Partners' Quar- 
terly Meeting, receiving the Extracts from 
the Orthodox Yearly Meeting, and in every 
way acted on the theory that the other 
party was the seceders, and they the true 



and only Society of Friends. The Women's 
Meeting assembled in the Osborn house and 
the Men's in the barn, which had been, 
sixty years before, the original meeting- 
house. 

QUAKER HILL DIVIDED. 

In the same month of June the Monthly 
Meeting, which represented only the Hill 
and environs, assembled in this meeting- 
house. Upon the decision of this meeting 
would depend the ownership of the meet- 
ing house and the records; and more than 
all, the acceptance with the community as 
the true Society of Friends, The whole 
country-side would assemble to such a 
meeting. 

At this meeting the Hicksite party were 
plainly in control. There was no doubt 
about the Clerk, that official whose action 
determined so much in every divided meet- 
ing. The clerk of Oblong was John Wing, 
who remained with the Hicksites through 
the separation. The critical question came 
upon the endeavor of Orthodox representa- 
tives to read the Extracts from their yearly 
Meeting. Instantly there were opposers, 
who, with personal bitterness and noisy 
emphasis, refused them the right even to 
read them. Loud voices asserted that the 
Extracts contained falsehoods. Many 
were speaking at once. All order vanished. 
Men forgot dignity, principle, self-control 
and custom in the bursting of long pent 
feelings. The storm continued until the 
Orthodox members of the meeting, being 
clearly refused the recognition they desired 
for their Yearly Meeting, withdrew with 
what dignity and resignation they could 

26 



from the house their fathers had helped to 
build, to hospitable Paul Osborn's house. 
There for a year and a half they continued 
to meet, until the erection of the Orthodox 
Meeting-house, in which they still worship. 

The different views of duty animating the 
two parties in this division of brethren may 
best be described in the action which they 
each took with regard to the other faction. 

The Orthodox moved with zeal for doc- 
trines more precious to them than men, 
even than brethren or neighbors, disowned 
all members of the meeting who continued 
to worship in the old Oblong Meeting 
House after 1828. The Hicksite, influ- 
enced by the liberal thinking of the time, 
simply put on record the following in 
answer to the Query from the higher body 
as to atendance at meetings : "There is 
a manifest care with the most of Friends to 
attend all our meetings for worship and 
disclipine, except a few friends who with- 
drew from our last Monthly meeting and 
have not attended our meetings since." 

The Hicksite Friends also have reason to 
be grateful that, if it was the lot of the 
Orthodox to demonstrate the heroic side of 
faith, it was theirs to exhibit the gentle- 
ness and forbearance of the Christian and 
the Quaker. The following utterance read 
in this house after the separation, cannot 
be excelled as a sample of gentle forbear- 
ance and dispassionate tolerance : "Paul 
Osborn and Simeon Hermans having been 
named on two committees, and now having 
withdrawn and separated from this meet- 
ing, they are released from their appoint- 
ments." And the Hicksite meeting took 

27 



310 Other important action as to the divis- 
ion. 

One month later peace reigned again, 
and in the answers to the Queries the Clerk 
can only name as a prevalent form of mis- 
conduct the fact that worshippers at Oblong 
Meeting house "were not quite clear of 
sleeping in meeting." 

RESULTS OF THE SEPARATION. 

So the Friends became unfriendly, the 
Quakers were rent by a chasm ; and lamen- 
table have been the results of that separa- 
tion. The respect of the Christian World 
so long enjoyed by that Society has never 
been given to either portion of it to the ex- 
clusion of the other, and the whole effect 
of the efforts of Orthodox to discredit 
Eicksite and of Hicksite to deny Orthodox 
has been to make the Christian observer 
believe in neither. The honor to the indi- 
vidual Friend is the same as of old, and is 
given to him who worthily wears the Qua- 
ker manner of life, of whichever party. The 
discipline of the Oblong Meeting, for one 
hundred years the mightiest moral engine 
of this neighborhood, was wrecked in the 
disowning of brethren for their opinions, 
whose moral character was not impeached. 
Moreover the intellectual leadership, which 
in religious matters becomes prophecy, spent 
its forces in discussion of abstractions too 
high for the minds of men, and only re- 
motely related to living. Thus the Hill 
lost in the years following 1828 both its 
law and its gospel. Men already too prone 
to money-making and to pleasure ran after 
wealth or became more and more worldly, 

28 



and for a period none rebuked them, be- 
cause the priests of God were too busy dis- 
cussing heaven to serve the needs of earth. 
In this I am sure the Quakers were no 
worse and no different from other Chris- 
tians who have separated themselves from 
brethren because of opinions. It has always 
weakened Christianity to divide from good 
men, save for loftiest doctrinal reasons. 
What a comment upon such divisions is the 
remark of the New Jersey judge presiding 
over the Chancery lawsuit about the prop- 
erty of the Society, who said that his task 
of sifting evidence was made easier inas- 
much as all the witnesses on both sides 
agreed substantially in all questions of 
fact? The last act of this meeting was to 
raise money for black freedmen of Carolina. 
What a pity that Friends whose ancestors 
met the blood-thirsty Indian savages half- 
way and paid them for land granted to them 
by the King, visited depraved criminals in 
Fleet prison whose jailor dared not stand 
unarmed among them, could not agree with 
men of Christian character beyond reproach, 
and separated themselves from saints. 
What a pity that suggestions of moder- 
ation and advice looking toward harmony, 
or an agreeable division of property, should 
come to the followers of William Penn and 
Elizabeth Fry from civil magistrates and 
public officials. Before such as they George 
Fox had stood as a shining example and 
towering rebuke. It was reasons such as 
these that compelled Samuel Bettle, Clerk 
of the Orthodox yearly meeting in Phila- 
delphia, about whose personal and official 
position the division in Philadelphia began, 

29 



to declare, thirty years after, that "he be- 
lieved patient labor and suffering would 
have been better than division." The re- 
ligious history of Quaker Hill in the nine- 
teenth century, and the knowledge of the 
lives of her saints enforces that judicious 
and solid conclusion. 

For whether Elias Hicks was a heretic or 
not there came into his division of friends 
after separation those whose preaching 
alarmed and distressed him as his had dis- 
tressed Ann Jones and Ann Braithwaith. 
H he was wrong, it was the duty of right 
men to labor with him, not leave him. And 
if bigotry cannot be laid against the Orth- 
odox who endured the heroic sufferings of 
the days of separation, it was not many 
years before that portion was rent again 
with a more grievous and subtile schism, 
and further weakened by the spirit of divis- 
ion. Each party in short needed the other. 
The Orthodoxy of the children of light 
needs to be salted by the wisdom of this 
world ; and liberal studies need the moder- 
ating influence of evangelistic work; apart 
each runs to barrenness. 

The division was lamentable because it 
was not so much a separation from unwel- 
come doctrines as it was a separation of men 
of different types from one another. The 
community whose thinkers part company 
with its men of feeling and conscience is a 
wounded community. To separate the 
Orthodox from the Hicksite was not merely 
to separate men who stated their doctrine 
of the divinity of Christ in different ways; 
but it was to separate progressives and con- 
servatives, whom God made to be members 

30 



one of the other. Each was the worse for 
the schism. 

PROVIDENTIAL CAUSES. 

The causes of this division of friends were 
at work on Quaker Hill as actively as in 
New York or Philadelphia. Quakerism was 
rent by the forces at work in the world, all 
of them I believe salutory forces. First, by 
the rationalist spirit of the wonderful nine- 
teenth century. The century of inventions, 
discoveries, revolutions, enfranchisements 
must needs break up and dissolve every old 
thing to make a new world. The spirit 
that animated Fulton, Stephen, Gray, 
Edison and all the inventors ; the spirit 
that inspired Charles Darwin and James 
Martineau, and Herbert Spencer and Henry 
Drummond, and Horace Bushness and the 
scientists, inspired Elias Hicks and David 
Irish. 

Second, the evangelistic movement of the 
century set up a different current in the 
Society of Friends. The spirit that in- 
spired the Sunday school in Robert Raikes, 
the Y. M. C. A. in Sir George Williams, 
the C. E. in Dr. Francis E. Clark, the 
spirit of Charles G. Finney and of Dwight 
L. Moody animated also Ann Braithwait 
and Paul Osborn. 

Moreover, I trust I will not offend 
Friends if I say that it was impossible for 
them in the nineteenth century to follow 
Fox in the seventeenth century. And they 
did not follow him. I am profoundly con- 
vinced, from study of the whole contro- 
versy, and reading the deliverances of both 
sides and the action they took, that the 

31 



tendencies which both followed were away 
from George Fox forever. As George Fox 
therefore was independent of those who 
went before him, and we honor him for 
that boldness, all honor to the Quakers, 
Orthodox and Hicksite, who departed from 
him as he departed from Luther, and Cal- 
vin and Latimer. 

If you can bear with me in this state- 
ment my friends, you will also hear me 
while I say further that study of both sides 
convinces me also that neither party was 
led away from Christ, or out of the bands 
of Christianity. This they each humbly 
profess, in almost identical terms, and with 
a common meekness and sincerity. 

Perhaps he who spoke of the grain of 
corn falling into the ground to die, before 
it bears much fruit, had his own designs in 
the dissolution of George Fox's own com- 
pact and solid Society. He who looked for 
the leaven to be diffused in the loaf, not 
hoarded in a bowl by itself, may have 
poured out in the world the Quaker treas- 
ure. Certain it is that since the division 
the spirit and principles of the Society of 
Friends have been more widely prevalent 
and more universally accepted as a stand- 
ard than before. On Quaker Hill at least 
the principles of spirituality, of religion, of 
the inner light, of the equality of all men as 
possessing God's inner light, are, in the 
writer's opinion, as widely accepted and as 
firmly believed in 1900 as they were in 
1800. 

QUAKER HILL MEN AND WOMEN. 

Yet the Quaker Hill community has 
lasted until the present day; and there are 



as many Quaker Hill men as there ever 
were. The Quaker Hill community is an 
immortal social unit, born of the soil, the 
scenery, the history and the faith of the 
Hill. The Quaker Hill man is a citizen of 
that community, permeated with its spirit, 
living by its code of morals, and guided by 
its etiquette for men of every station in 
life, a man just, sane, industrious and 
truthful. 

The Quaker Hill community is a univer- 
sally religious one. There lives no one 
here who does not desire to worship God 
with his neighbors. Religion has lan- 
guished here when it has ceased to care for 
men or to serve their spiritual needs, but 
never when it has spoken their language, 
and interpreted the divine message to their 
lives. 

It is a mutually helpful community. In 
1765 the meeting here took action "to raise 
money to buy a cow to loan to Jesse Irish." 
In the years 1894 and 1900 the community 
took precisely similar action to assist in 
each case a neighbor on whom trouble had 
fallen. This was never an act of charity, 
but it is an old custom, as invariable as 
insurance, by which for over a century 
every dweller up and down this old road 
buys shares in his neighbors trouble. 
Quaker Hill is always potentially a stock 
company. 

No individual is lost or forgotten on the 
Hill; and in many instances those most 
obscure to the worldling's eye are highest 
in fame and dearest in affection. First 
names prevail. Unadorned surnames, even 

of women if well known, are the most com- 

» 

33 



mon designation, and titles are little more 
than Summer visitors. The community 
initiates new comers by free use of their 
surnames; the second degree is adminis- 
tered by general use of the first name; and 
a man may be said to have taken his third 
degree when he is called by his first name 
with an affectionate diminutive, as Jimmie, 
Willie, Annie, Robbie. Taught by God- 
fearing Friends we fear no man, yet no- 
where is a man more valued. Clear eyes 
and calm judgment are still here to take 
the measure of every newcomer; and once 
received into citizenship, he will not be 
displaced. Yet a life residence is not 
enough to gain a welcome for an intruder. 

The spirit of the Hill is one of high cour- 
tesy and respect for good manners. Not 
the manners of a parlor. They are still the 
manners of a religious assembly. To sit 
with one's wife in church may be pleasant 
for Summer visitors, but it would be an 
improbable act in the case of a resident ; 
and in the case of a native impossible. A 
Quaker Hill audience is possessed by in- 
herent right of the ability to sit in perfect 
silence in a Meeting-house. Restlessness 
among the young may arise in a bustling 
meeting of the modern type ; but the same 
persons would be immovable as granite if 
the meeting were to pause in silence for a 
period. 

Neatness in dress, at least in some gar- 
ment, is an inheritance from forefathers 
who made dress a matter of religion. The 
genuine Quaker Hill man wears a neck- 
cloth while ploughing, whose freshness and 
fit, unequalled by a dandy on the avenue, 

34 



can be seen by the passerby as a token of 
a dressy ancestry. In a community in 
which a handshake has dismissed worship 
for nearly two centuries, it still has its high 
value, and has been known to determine 
a friendship for life. 

The relations of young men and maidens 
are rigidly framed by many decades of 
Quaker discipline into a code so impalpable 
that Philistines do not know it exists; yet 
to break which in public is to forfeit public 
respect, and years do not efface the impres- 
sion made by a public offence against the 
customs approved. 

This is a community of transparent men. 
No one has attempted for a century and a 
half to hide his motives or belie his deeds. 
Every man's debts are known, his tastes, 
his likings and his prejudices. He him- 
self will resent any social treatment that 
takes him out of his proper niche in the 
community. The result of all this is a per- 
fect frankness in wrongdoing, when wrong 
is done, and a certain self-respect and com- 
placency about goodness. The fathers told 
the truth for so long that we do so too, and 
take our places in the community which 
self-respect and public opinion, in perfect 
harmony, assign us. 

The Quaker Hill community and the 
Quaker Hill man were the same in 1800 as 
they are in 1900, only perhaps a little less 
cosmopolitan. The century did not disrupt 
the neighborhood when it divided the meet- 
ing. Did not change the character of pub- 
lic opinion when it removed from the Hill 
a majority of the native blood, and filled 
many houses wtih strangers. The com- 



35 



munity has proven more immortal than the 
meeting. Through all the changes of one 
hundred years the spirit of the place has 
ripened ; the outward aspect has, with mow- 
ing-machines, city visitors, endowed church 
and library, and other reflections of the 
great world, become modern. But a man 
is more thought of than a man's dollars, 
just as of old. Sacraments and priests are 
believed in but little, and God-given motives 
are still the accepted light of life. 



NOTE ON MAP OF QUAKER HILL 
See Frontispiece. 
In the possession of the New York Historical 
Society, Second Avenue and Eighth Street, New 
York City, are two maps, No. 35 and 37, in the 
De Witt Clinton Collection, made by Robert Ers- 
klne for Washington's use in 1778-80. We publish 
as a frontispiece the second of these, not hitherto 
reproduced. Attention is called to the names of 
residents upon the farms, and to the locations of 
farm houses, also to the present site of Pawling, 
marked "Waters Divide," to the 'Headquarters/* 
"Auditor's Quarters," "Adjutant General's" 
Quarters, located at houses which still cherish the 
tradition of use by Washington. It is evident from 
this map and that published a year ago, that 
Washington's official headquarters were at the 
house on the site of the present Roberts residence, 
opposite the Golf Links in Pawling. 



3477-125 
Lot 52 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




014 109 563 8 






